{"id":219,"date":"2011-06-28T22:09:17","date_gmt":"2011-06-28T22:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/?p=219"},"modified":"2017-11-23T22:10:31","modified_gmt":"2017-11-23T22:10:31","slug":"standing-mute-before-the-master-of-dialogue-k-c-constantine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/2011\/06\/28\/standing-mute-before-the-master-of-dialogue-k-c-constantine\/","title":{"rendered":"Standing mute before the master of dialogue, K.C. Constantine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading K.C. Constantine can make you wonder why you\u2019d bother to write crime stories. Maybe musicians feel that way when they listen to Beethoven or Prince, artists when they look at Rembrandt or Kiefer.<\/p>\n

Artists can inspire you to become creative yourself, or remove the incentive by being totally intimidating.<\/p>\n

Joni Mitchell made this point obliquely<\/span>\u00a0in an\u00a0interview<\/a>, talking about short story writers Raymond Carver and Alice Munro. \u201cI\u2019ve been a frustrated short story writer, but whereas Carver makes me think I can write short stories, Munro makes me think I can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mitchell\u2019s quote came to mind as I was reading K.C. Constantine\u2019s\u00a0Upon Some Midnights Clear<\/a><\/em>. Published in 1985, it\u2019s the seventh book in the series featuring Mario Balzic, police chief in the fictitious town of Rocksburg, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not necessarily any better than the other books in the series, at least not the 12 I\u2019ve read so far. (Apart from\u00a0Bottom Liner Blues<\/em>, which was an uncharacteristic misstep.) However, I hadn\u2019t read one for a while, so I was struck afresh by what a great writer Carl Constantine Kosak really is.<\/p>\n

After years of keeping his identity secret, K.C. Constantine has now seemingly been identified beyond doubt. Mr Kosak he may be to his wife and accountant, but to me and a legion of readers he\u2019s Mr Constantine and will remain so.<\/p>\n

While his books are nominally police procedurals, plot never comes first in a\u00a0K.C. Constantine\u00a0<\/a>novel. They\u2019re firstly about character, then about social issues. These are the valuable beads threaded together by workmanlike plotlines.<\/p>\n

The most impressive single aspect of Constantine\u2019s writing is his supreme mastery of dialogue. K.C. Constantine can have a page or two of dialogue, three people talking, without a single \u201che said\u201d or anything outside the dialogue to identify the characters. You can tell who\u2019s speaking by what they say and, most impressively, by\u00a0how<\/em>\u00a0they say it. Speech patterns are all Constantine needs to paint a character.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s when reading a scene like this that one can despair and threaten to break your quill and overturn your inkwell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading K.C. Constantine can make you wonder why you\u2019d bother to write crime stories. Maybe musicians feel that way when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[24,28],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions\/220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}